Chinasaurs

Dinosaurs aren't extinct, but live among us as birds. Amazing fossil discoveries by two of China's leading palaeontologists are revolutionising our understanding about the origin of flight and feathers. Catalyst goes digging with them in Liaoning Province in north-eastern China, to discover new evidence that rewrites the evolutionary history of flowering plants, and even our mammalian ancestors.

Broadcast:
Thu 23 Nov 2006, 9:00pm

Published:
Thu 23 Nov 2006, 9:00pm

Transcript

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Narration: Professor Xu Xing has the closest thing to a time machine - the overnight train from Beijing to north-eastern China.

It takes him back to a lost world 130 million years away, where dinosaurs have feathers, and dragons are no bigger than birds.

Hidden below the rolling hills of Liaoning Province are some of the richest fossil beds on earth.

The towns and farms are built on crowded cemeteries of ancient animals and plants.

So diverse are the fossils that Xu Xing has found 27 new species of dinosaur, more than anyone else.

Xu Xing: Just recently we realised we have so many ancient lives underneath and those ancient lives tell us something we don't know before.

Narration: And it's the local farmers who dig many of them up.

Their ploughs and shovels are the unofficial tools of Chinese palaeontology.

From many of the fossils they find, Xu Xing is piecing together a new picture of evolution.

Because in the fossils he sees evidence that dinosaurs aren't extinct, but live among us as birds.

Xu Xing: Most of the bird-like dinosaur fossils are very important for understanding the origin of flight. Very cool stuff.

Narration: It's all because of the environment that formed these rocks in the early Cretaceous period.

130 million years ago, there were regular volcanic eruptions around here, smothering sandy lake-beds in thick blankets of ash.

Written in the pages of fine-grained shale are intricate fossils found nowhere else in the world.

They're the focus for China's top palaeontologists, among them the father of feathered dinosaurs, Professor Ji Qiang.

Narration: Like hundreds of prehistoric Pompeii's stacked on top of each other, the skeletons and coverings of animals were perfectly preserved at the very moment of their death.

It was here in 1996 that Ji Qiang saw the first and most primitive dinosaur that looked more fluffy than scaly.

Ji Qiang: As a palaeontologist, I could not believe that a dinosaur could have fur like a mammal. What could it be? The only possibility is that 125 million years ago there was an ancient form of feather.

In scientific Latin, this feathered dinosaur was called Sinosauropteryx. But the Professor had something more poetic in mind.

Ji Qiang: I gave it a name, Zhonghua Longniao, that means Chinese dragon-bird.

Narration: It was compelling evidence of a direct link between birds and dinosaurs.

Ji Qiang: Most Chinese people think I do something wrong.

Narration: Really?

Ji Qiang: Oh yeah. They think that bird cannot derive from dinosaur.

Narration: What was controversial just ten years ago is now mainstream.

You are a scientific revolutionary, yes?

Ji Qiang: Oh, hard to say.

Narration: But to really prove the origin of birds you need to find a feathered dinosaur, that can fly.

Back in Beijing, it's a dream that drives Xu Xing and his students. He's finding new fossils faster than his lab can describe them.

Xu Xing: I have found more new species than others.

Narration: You are number one fossil star?

Xu Xing: I don't know, but I'm the most lucky one.

Narration: And this is the dinosaur that made him famous in 2003 ... a surprisingly tiny predator called Microraptor, frozen in mid-flight.

These are feathers?

Xu Xing: Yes. The most unusual part for this fossil is that flight feathers are not only along the arm, they are also along the foot, which is not known in any other animals. See here, and here, long feathers...

Narration: Incredibly, Microraptor has not just two wings, but four wings. Its feathers have the same asymmetrical shape seen in the flight feathers of modern birds.

Xu Xing: The bone structure, the feather structure, all indicate this animal might be able to fly.

Narration: How this animal looked and behaved in real life was reconstructed by the popular TV series, Prehistoric Park.